Computer system security is an increasingly important issue in the computer industry. Computer system users are rightfully concerned about the security of electronically stored information from unauthorized access, and especially for sensitive and valuable business information. Malicious attacks by computer viruses and unauthorized access to computer networks, for example, cause disruption of computer networks and can cause destruction of data or loss of secrecy to such data. Moreover, the computer systems themselves can be compromised by electronic vandalism, so as to be temporarily or permanently disabled.
Various encryption schemes have been developed to improve the security of computer systems. Such encryption schemes employ cryptographic primitives to increase reliability. However, use of cryptographic primitives is time-consuming, especially schemes employing asymmetric cryptographic primitives, e.g., based on (RSA) or on elliptic curve cryptosystems (ECC), etc. Nevertheless, use of asymmetric cryptographic schemes—especially ECC—is growing in popularity; as at least one reason, an ECC key length is shorter than an RSA key length for an equivalent security level. Despite this, the signature verification by various cryptographic schemes, including for example, the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA), remains particularly time-consuming; in fact, ECDSA, for example, is up to twenty (20) times slower than the signature verification process of RSA. Such delay is problematic, particularly when authentication time is critical, such as for example, during secure boot or during loading of signed applications.